Orange County and the vehicles that ply its roads

We don’t really need a reminder of how widespread the automobile became in Southern California, especially after World War II. But after flipping through the Flickr stream of the Orange County Archives, it becomes abundantly clear how dependent Southern California became on the automobile so quickly. Many of the scenes in the collection that show automobiles display the mega-sized parking lots and wide, automobile-saturated roads that were widespread in the area while the rest of the country still dealt with two-lane highways, dirt parking lots and minimal amounts of traffic.

casey shainsays:

April 7, 2011 8:35 am

The top photo reminds me of a scene in Goldfinger. The CIA, driving a ’64 Tbird convertible, tails Odd Job, driving a ’64 Lincoln Continental. They’re on a double-lane suburban thoroughfare like the pictured.

I like the Lincoln coupe in the lower part of the photo, and is that a white Reinhart Packard in the background, left?

On The Streets Of Orsays:

April 7, 2011 11:58 am

[…] Motor we love photos of automobiles and other vehicles being used on the roads during their time. Follow this link to a great post by Dan Strohl on the HMM Blog showing vehicles on the streets of Orange County […]

Pete Madsensays:

April 7, 2011 2:56 pm

I know some license plate collectors who’d pay big for that low-number 1930 dealer plate. The photo by the park entrance can be dated to before 1914 by the home-made license plates on the cars.
I have to wonder what the dump truck on the hook hit. Great pix, thanks!